


Same Time Tomorrow?

by AuntieNadeshiko (Haurvatat)



Series: No, Gabriel, the Virgin Mary Does Not Want a Kit-Kat [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Random Adventures, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 08:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haurvatat/pseuds/AuntieNadeshiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam wakes up naked in Venice with an un-dead Gabriel and isn't sure what he's supposed to be questioning first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same Time Tomorrow?

Sam doesn’t know what the hell is going on the first time Gabriel pops up out of fucking nowhere proposing an adventure.  Not that he ever knows what the hell is going on whenever Gabriel gets involved, but the point is still valid.

 

“Sammy.  Psst.  Sam.  Wake up.”

 

Hissing whispers like that, gentle and not at all urgent, give Sam the impression that getting up right now is not a life-and-death matter, and so he’ll be damned if he’s going to obey.

 

“Sammy, it’s morning.”

 

Ignored.

 

“Sammy, it’s morning and we’re in Venice.”

 

_…The fuck?_

 

One eye cracks open and _holy shit he’s in Venice_.  More importantly, he and his entire motel mattress have been relocated to the centre of a gondola, which is in the centre of a goddamn _canal_.  Actually, the part that should be freaking Sam out the most, he hasn’t even quite computed yet.

 

“Mornin’, Toot-Sweet!” Gabriel chimes in a tacky Southern drawl.

 

“You said that wrong,” Sam can only utter stupidly.  “It’s from the French-“

 

“I know what it’s from, dumbass.  But Toot-Sweet opens up the floor for both candy puns and fart jokes, and you know I am all about them fart jokes.  No, but seriously, Sammy, my dear, back from the dead and the first thing you do is critique my jokes?  Stanford sure picked a winner,” Gabriel says.

 

“I… you were… what?”  Sam got to bed two hours ago.  He has a legitimate excuse.  Gabriel can suck himself if he’s got a problem with it.

 

“Heard that and no, thank you.  Although you’re right, I totally can.  Humans can’t, ‘cause of that whole ribcage thing, which actually was my suggestion because this one time Adam made fun of my height.  See?  Not so funny now, is it?  The platypus was also largely my idea.”

 

“You’re kidding.”

 

“Nope.  Actually, most of Australia was my idea.  You don’t get a country that badass without some serious finagling.”

 

“This explains so much,” Sam mumbles, pushing himself up onto his hands.

 

“Whoa!  Sammy!  Not that I don’t appreciate the view-“

 

Oh, tits.  Summer in Nebraska and the AC in the motel broke down.  He’d chucked off all of his clothes save his briefs before bed.

 

“Gabriel?”

 

“What?”

 

“Why am I not killing you right now?”

 

Gabriel cracks a sheepish grin, and not quite so shit-eating a smirk as he’s been sporting this whole time.  “Because if my brother couldn’t manage it, I think you’d have some difficulties.  Just putting that out there.  Also possibly because I left your weapons back in your motel room.  Save one.”  He glances pointedly at Sam’s well-filled briefs.

 

Sam ignores it, because that is what one does when Gabriel is being ridiculous.  Which is basically all the time.  “About that.  Your whole surviving trick.  How did you do it?”

 

The smile slides off Gabriel’s face.  His shoulders harden, and in that moment, Sam can very much see the resemblance between Castiel and the archangel before him.  Their eyes seem to carry the same weight all the time, even if Gabriel hides it considerably better.  The shameless eye-fucking also appears to be a common family thing, but Sam’s not sure if Gabriel means it in the soul-wrenching devoted kind of way Castiel does when he looks at Dean.  Gabriel finally opens his mouth.  “I knew damn well that confronting Lucifer wasn’t going to do anything.  Dad and Michael couldn’t convince him to change his mind, and that was before the Cage messed him up even more.  Dying would have accomplished nothing, Sam.  I always kind of hoped my death would have meaning of some kind.  The act of my dying itself, I mean.  Not just the tape I left you two chuckleheads.  You know how Lucifer and Michael had you and your brother as the whole One-Vessel-to-Rule-Them-All thing?”  Sam nods uneasily.  “Well, I do, too.  I was never planning on using her, up until I didn’t really have a choice.”

 

“Her?” Sam can’t help but ask.  He’s fighting back a smile.  Gabriel as a girl is kind of a hilarious image.

 

“Yeah.  Quit your giggling, numbnuts – it’s not funny and you’re sexist.  Anyway, I basically turned my old makeshift body into a meat puppet instead of meat suit.  It was never a proper vessel in that it never had a person in there.  It was a homunculus, and since homunculi and Nordic mythology have roots somewhat nearby each other… I figured, what the hell.  Human vessels are a pain, and all that nonsense with you and your brother just confirmed it for me.  Still, I needed a home base from whence to do all my puppet-master crap, and I asked her for help faking my death and she was cool with it.  Actually, I think the deal was, ‘Make it so I never gain a pound from candy consumption and Thunderbirds are Go, Captain.’  To quote her, you know.  Child after my own heart.  So then I faked my death in a very spectacular manner and sashayed away.  I even had to do the flashy-light thing and the burnt wing outlines, in, like, a fraction of a second.  I had to make a damn stencil and everything.  It looked pretty cool, though, so I consider it a job well done. Fixed up my old body once Lucifer was gone that was that.”

 

Sam has woken up by now, and he can’t help but notice that Gabriel has not snapped up any clothes for him.  It’s cold out and even though people on the streets don’t seem to be noticing his indecent exposure or the bed in the gondola (he suspects some sort of Star Trek-like perception filter has been put in place by an unusually thoughtful Trickster), he’s feeling very exposed.  “Any particular reason you didn’t come to help later, then?  Let us know you were alive?”

 

“What do you think this is?  Other than a playdate, I mean.”

 

“Kidnapping, you mean.”

 

“Yeah, that too.”

 

“Gabriel-!”

 

“Relax, kiddo.  I just told you – what would it have accomplished?  From what I hear, you did great all by your lonesome.  Well, I mean, I helped.  But the point is, I helped all I could, and then I went on my way,” Gabriel says.

 

Sam has one last thing he can’t figure out.  “So why are you back, if you’ve done all you needed to do?”

 

Gabriel’s not looking at Sam, but a small, fond smile spreads across his face.  His eyes soften for a moment, gazing out at the water alongside the gondola.  “Because of reasons, kiddo.”

 

Sam huffs a breath.  “Well, if you didn’t want to say, you could have said it without being all mysterious and shit.  Now why are we in Venice, or is that also ‘because of reasons’?”

 

Gabriel looks affronted.  “Why, Sam!  It’s Italia!  The land of food as far as the eye can see!  Skinny people don’t last a day here.  And if somebody pisses you off, you just chuck them in a canal.  Name me a better city in this shitheap you call a planet.  We’re going out for lunch – er, actually, I think it might be breakfast for you or something – and that’s final!  Also, there will be fudge later.  Non-negotiable.”

 

“Then can I have some damn pants?”

 

Sam just fucking _watches_ as the thought blooms across Gabriel’s face.  He doesn’t need to say it.  Sam already knows the answer.

 

\--

 

Gabriel eventually took pity on Sam’s sheet-wrapped ass and gave him some pants.  He also got a lovely burgundy dress shirt with a black vest over it.  There was even a silver pocketwatch.  Overall, he looked posh, which, as it turned out, meant a very different thing in Europe than it did in America.

 

Sam had had no idea how to react to Gabe in general, what with how much they were supposed to hate each other, and then with how much Gabriel had actually sacrificed for their sakes, how much he had risked.  And then there was the incredibly annoying part where Gabriel was almost impossible to dislike when he went out of his way to be charming.  Sam still got the impression that Gabriel didn’t know how to charm people in ways that didn’t include chocolate, which explained the fudge.  The copious amounts of Italian food (and Gabriel wasn’t kidding about the portions) didn’t hurt, either.

 

The sun is going down and by Sam’s calculations, in Nebraska it should be noon.  Given that they’d only gotten to sleep around 5 in the morning with a hunt finished, Sam suspects Dean will be asleep for another hour or so, at which point he will need to be back, because his cell phone is still with Dean in the motel room.

 

The two of them are perched on a bench along the Bridge of Sighs, gazing out over the murky waters and ancient buildings.  There’s a charm to the whole place, Sam will admit.  He’s a little pissed that Gabriel wouldn’t let Sam drag him into any of the numerous museums that peppered the city (“We are _not_ common tourists and we’re sure as hell not going to act like them, Samuel Winchester.”) but he can get over that.  Some ridiculous part of his brain whispers that he can always come back.

 

“You can, you know,” Gabriel says, leaning over to say it by Sam’s ear – or as close as he can reach, his height being what it is.  “If you want to come back, you can just drop a line or something.”

 

“Because I totally have an archangel on speed-dial,” Sam scoffs, although he’s delighted with the offer.

 

“Just think it, short-stuff.  I’ll hear you.”

 

“I really hope that was sarcastic.”

 

“Calling you short?  No shit.  But I wasn’t kidding.  You can call me in prayer, same way as with Cas.”  Gabriel smiles at nothing again.  “I might not be the angel I used to be, but I’ve still got ears.”

 

Sam is suddenly reminded of all the prayers he made as a child, wishing for an angel to come down and tell him what the right thing to do was, like they did for Mary.  Like _Gabriel_ did for Mary.  His eyes go wide and his face goes beet red and he’s just happy that Gabe’s staring off into space instead of pouncing on the opportunity, because with his mind-read-y shit, there’s no way he didn’t just hear that.

 

They sit in silence for a while, if only to aid in digestion.

 

Seriously, not kidding about the size of Italian serving portions.

 

“You want to head back soon, I bet?” Gabriel asks.

 

“It’s a thought,” Sam says.  “If Dean wakes up and finds I’ve left without my pants, he’s going to come to the totally-correct assumption that I’ve been abducted and then he’ll want to stab things and then uninvolved things are going to get stabbed and it’s altogether more paperwork than I’m feeling up to at the moment.”

 

“Reasonable,” Gabriel nods sagely.  He turns to Sam at last and gives him an appraising look.

 

“So, same time tomorrow?”


End file.
